This invention relates to tube cutting apparatus capable of simultaneously cutting multiple segments from a continuous length of tubing in a high speed shearing operation. Embodiments feature a superior ability to economically produce ring or cylindrically shaped tube segments of short length the ends of which are cut in planes angularly inclined to their longitudinal axis.
The high speed and economical production of tube segments of ring or cylindrical shape is well known in the prior art but only in respect to those segments the ends of which are cut essentially at right angles to their longitudinal axis. Typical of conventional apparatus applied to such purpose is that exemplified in the Brehm U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,837,156 and the Shields U.S. Pat. No. 4,003,278, the latter of which carries forward, to some extent, the invention of the Brehm patent. The "Brehm" tube cutter includes a cutting station to which a continuous length of tubing may be fed and there contained by cutting dies the movement of one of which relative the other, in two senses one of which is at right angles to the other, produces two cuts and a single shearing operation, by virtue of which a single segment of the tubing is cut from its advancing end. The segment so cut will have a ring cylindrical shape and "squared" ends.
Many efforts have been made to automate the "Brehm" type cutter and increase its production capability or expand the field of its application. However, heretofore no one has produced improvements which have enabled the simultaneous cutting of multiple tube segments therein, let alone tube segments the respective ends of which have been successfully and economically cut on a bias.
It is not that it has not been known heretofore to produce tube segments the ends of which have been cut on the bias but that were such tube segments have been fabricated, they have been produced in a relatively inefficient manner which has been particularly wasteful of the tubing material and relatively slow from a production standpoint. Conventionally the tube segments having inclined ends have been cut one by one, using a saw. The structure employed inherently dictates that there is a loss of material on each cut, which loss is at least equal to the thickness of the saw blade employed. Apart from this, the sawing procedure has often left the tube segments so cut with sharp and dangerous edge portions. This means that the tube segments so fabricated must at one point or another be further processed to remove these sharp edge portions prior to their use as end products, in one form or another.
It was to the solution of those problems above noted in the tube cutting art that the efforts which resulted in the present invention were directed.
It is believed that the disclosures of the above noted prior art patents are generally representative of the present level of knowledge of the prior art most pertinent to the present invention.